The present invention is designed for moving used railway cars, such as box cars and refrigerator cars, from one site to another. Surplus railway cars are recyclable for use as storage sheds or utility buildings. They are particularly desirable for rural and manufacturing storage. Refrigerated cars, being insulated and provided with a self-contained refrigeration system, are utilized by farmers as refrigerated storage buildings for produce, meat, dairy products and other applications where refrigeration is desirable.
The conventional manner by which railway cars are moved from one site to another involves use of a crane or a tractor forklift and a supporting flatbed trailer. However, the use of such equipment requires at least two operators and generally involves substantial expense for rental of machinery. More importantly, the transporting of moving box cars while supported on a typical flatbed trailer requires special height permits for highway travel. Height restrictions on highways can make such transport efforts prohibitively expensive.
Railway box cars are relatively uniform in height. In the United States, most box cars, after removal of their supporting wheel trucks, have a height of thirteen feet, six inches, from ground to roof surface. Since the normal height limits for loads carried on interstate highways in the United States is fourteen feet, the unsupported box car has only six inches of clearance available, much too little for effective use of an underlying flatbed trailer.
The specialized trailer described herein has been designed to lift a box car at its opposite ends, transport the box car while supported with an acceptable ground clearance and maximum height suitable for highway transport purposes, and subsequently position and lower the box car onto an awaiting foundation for stationary storage purposes. It is adaptable to railway cars of any length, since it utilizes two opposed support structures interconnected only by the structure of the railway car itself. The machinery for transporting, unloading and loading a railway car can be readily operated and moved by a single person.